Fall in love with messy, lovely ‘George & Lizzie’
NPR’s Nancy Pearl creates a true-to-life couple to root for
In her debut novel, George & Lizzie (Touchstone, 278 pp., eeeg*** 1⁄ out
2 of four), Nancy Pearl, best known as “America’s librarian,” delivers a love story that, at first, doesn’t speak so much to our hearts as to our heads, and all the neuroses and self-doubt involved.
Many fictional romances have a rom-com quality in which the characters, particularly the protagonists, are keenly self-aware. Their thoughts and dialogue are pitch perfect, reasoned and wellthought-out. Often, these stories are the first be-all, end-all true love for the destined couple.
George & Lizzie is not one of those fictional romances, and that is what makes it so lovely and, in some ways, superior. George and Lizzie’s love affair, if you could call it that, is messy and, more importantly, human.
As people, they could not be more different. George Goldrosen comes from a loving and stereotypically American home complete with a father he looked up to and a stay-athome mother he adores. George follows in his father’s footsteps, choosing a career in dentistry.
Lizzie Bultmann’s home life was anything but idyllic, with a pair of behavioral psychologist parents who treated her more like a project than a child and left her upbringing to babysitters and grad students. Lizzie chooses to study poetry and English, the subjects farthest away from her parents’ fields of endeavor.
Lizzie and George are far from perfect for each other when they meet while she is in college and he’s in dental school. Lizzie is filled with hems and haws, fits and starts of dwelling on what should have been and what could be. George is easygoing, optimistic and certain in his life choices.
Lizzie’s incessant doubts come from two seminal experiences. First there was the extracurricular high school project she undertook as a teen, known as the Great Shame, in which she treated a series of sexual dalliances with members of the football team as an almost clinical undertaking.
The second are the vestiges of a fleeting college romance with Jack McConaghey, whom she is convinced is the love of her life. After he disappears, Lizzie takes it upon herself to search through city phone books (the story takes place in the early 1990s) for any sign of Jack. George’s doubts surface throughout their relationship as he tries to fill whatever emotional void he astutely perceives in Lizzie.
Pearl, NPR books commentator and author of Book Lust: Recommended Reading for Every Mood, Moment and Reason, weaves Lizzie’s and George’s past and present effortlessly and constructs a narrative that connects with the reader. Lizzie and George are not just fully fleshed out characters, but familiar. Pearl skillfully explores love in its many facets — true, unrequited, long-standing, parental, platonic and love for oneself. In the end, George & Lizzie is a tribute to love, warts and all.